"Hearing Stories"

by Damon Suede

Creative process is a personal thing. Every person who makes
something out of nothing wrestles with the razors-n-vinegar
crises of self-doubt, perfectionism, impatience, procrastination,
and myriad other problems that hover like bloodsucking gnats hoping
to drain any joy out of the artistic spark.

Facing a blank page is terrifying. Only people who write or draw or
draft will understand what I mean, but BOY will they! All that dire
bullshit being said, the act of making a world is one of my favorite
things. Over 20 years of writing for a living, I've developed an
arsenal of tricks and triggers to get me in the zone, to keep sight
of what I love about an idea, and to help me
stare the page into submission.

When I'm starting any project of any
size, my first concern is that I
know what world I'm visiting. The more I treat that world on its own
terms, the more readily the Muse digs up little treasures. The simplest
trick, and one already employed by thousands of artists is the
creation of a project specific soundtrack. I just take this
"soundtracking" a little
further than most.

I LOVE movie scores.
Seriously love. Far as I'm concerned, they're the perfect writing music: no distracting
lyrics, wide variety, constant evolution, and by definition
emotional and charged. I buy more movie scores that any other type of
music. I probably own about 1200 scores on CD and MP3, sorted by
genre. This collection of tracks is the core of my over-the-top
"soundtracking" process.

For everyday use or short writing gigs, I have a couple scores that are so impeccable that they
work as a kind of generic soundtrack for any project: American
Beauty, V for Vendetta, Code 46, Mansfield Park, Soap Dish, A Fish
Called Wanda, Cronenberg's Crash, A Very Long
Engagement, Romancing the Stone. But when I'm trying to craft a
full world from scratch, I invariably
explore and create a
"soundtrack" to learn things about my project before it's
even begun.

Music is an instinctive form. We respond to it first
subconsciously and so it's much more likely to stir the Muse
than abstractions or generalities. The soundtrack becomes a way for
me to check in with a Muse that might be feeling shy or coquettish
or squirmy. Writers always say that the best pieces write
themselves, that the Muse just gives them to you fully formed. I
completely agree. And bottom line: that kind of writing always
trumps the grind-it-out workhouse stuff that always feels shoddy no
matter how polished. The goal is to coax the Muse into the light. To get answers to my questions, all I only have to
listen.

When I'm kicking off a new assignment the first thing I do is find the
sound of the world. Sometimes I'll
only have a genre to start:
horror or action or suspense or comedy... and I'll rummage around in
my collection cherry-picking tracks from scores that seem like likely
suspects. Genre is an easy place to start because the musical
associations are so powerful: is it suspense or action?
Paranormal romance, whodunnit, or a blend of the two? Dark fantasy or erotic thriller? Steampunk or horror? As I
spiral in on a type of rhythm or an instrument or era that feels
right, these details suggest other artists, other bands, other
musical styles. Resonance and consonance.

I try to stay out of my "logical" head avoiding cleverness or anything
that feels clichéd.
I aim for synesthesia. I ask myself the kinds of figurative questions children pose to their best
friends: Is this story loud or soft? What's the tempo and what's the
period? What's the color of the story? What's the story afraid of
and what does it crave? What's
its taste or texture? If it
were an animal/plant/dessert/disease which would it be?
I cast out a net of subjective and nonliteral probes. The answers will start
to suggest
tunes, of course. And since I'm the one who has to do the writing
and the listening to the soundtrack, my answers are always right! In much the same way that designers
will swatch fabric or directors pull paintings or photographs for
their cinematographers, I'm looking for a common language that the
Muse and I can share. Every world wants to emerge.

Bit by bit I cobble together a huge stew of musical possibilities and
(while folding laundry or oiling my boots) listen to the whole
bloated mess
of possible tracks in one sitting of several hours, paying attention to the yeas and
nays, the definites and the vague maybes.... culling tracks as I go.
Each one I discard tells me just as much (if not more) than the ones
I keep, because I'm always asking myself why something feels
discordant,
what stuck out, what hit home... The wrong songs just fall out of orbit by the
weight of their wrongness. The right songs remain, like a
fingerprint of a half-glimpsed world that keeps floating closer.

Sometimes a song will make me think of a scene I know I want to
write or a setting. Or perhaps a singer will put me in mind of a character or a
prop or a pivotal moment. Track by track the characters' lives will come alive
in my ears. Aural mosaic! The order works itself out, certain songs will just flow
correctly into each other or inform each other or resonate in the
right place; a sequence emerges.

There are several advantages to this process:

It can be used to hone in on a slippery idea or a character
that won't stand in the light. Identifying the things that do or
do not help the world you might want to build narrows the focus
and sharpens your eye.

Collaging an overview with nonverbal
elements (music, paintings, objects) keeps you from getting
stuck in concepts or cleverness. This guarantees that the Muse
will feel free to play without the infernal judgment of the
Critic.

Before I've written a word, sometimes before I've written a
pitch or an outline, I learn what is and is not germane to the
story I'm telling. I know its boundaries and topography. I always end the soundtrack exercise knowing
my world and my characters more deeply and specifically than I
did at the beginning.

In a non-wanky way, the process is an extended meditation on
the world and its inhabitants using my subconscious
mind which is inevitably less formulaic and mechanical. The
conscious mind doesn't get in the way and the inventiveness
reflects that freedom.

My "soundtrack" acts as a perfect lens during the
rough-drafting. Outside noise and muddle are less distracting
when your fictional world is literally filling the space around
you. Family and friends are less likely to interrupt or burst in
because your "soundtrack" makes it clear that you are
somewhere else.

I wind up with a perfect trigger that (again) is largely
subconscious and inspiring. The moment you play one of my
"soundtracks" I'm immediately transported to the world of that
project. Music conveys scale, period, pace, tone. I can feel it in my bones: the palette, the smells, the
textures, the timbre of the voices... just from hearing certain
songs juxtaposed. Adios, so-called writer's block.

if I'm jumping between several projects because of deadlines
or rewrites or even a note from my agent, I can drop into the
world in about 2 minutes flat. Music's on and I'm inside.

I take the "soundtrack" creation so far that sometimes projects have a
soundtrack for the writing and another leaner collection for the revision, tweaked for
things I learned along the journey. The moment that revision
"soundtrack" is on, I know that I'm not just in the world, I'm
editing it! If I want o go back and redraft, the full "soundtrack"
can do the heavy lifting.

Recent example... no idea if this will be helpful for anyone else
but specifics are always the best explanation. This soundtrack was for my
contemporary erotic gay romance: HOT HEAD.

Before I started drafting, I took about a week to
identify my "soundtrack" that
felt like the world of Dante and Griff, macho firefighters in
love. Of course back then
they didn't even have names or a setting or a plot; I had to find
them first and their neighborhood. I had the barest sense of the
story, one sentence about forbidden romance in the FDNY after 9/11, but I tracked my
quarry with the tenacity of a bloodhound.

Starting from the base of "gay romance" I needed to get specific if
I wanted to get underway. Subgenre can push a "soundtrack" in
surprising directions... Hybrids require clarity. A blank page is
powerful and paralyzing. What did this particular gay story feel
like before I had plot or characters or even a working title? A
simple sweet love story? A violent homoerotic soap opera? A steampunk
zipper ripper? A dark raunchy BDSM manlove fantasy with an adventure
subplot? At first, all I knew was the New York firefighter germ.
Rummaging through my mp3s, my CDs, everything I had... I kept one
ear cocked, listening for the wisps of the world.

Sure enough, there it was... snapping its fingers and sauntering
towards me.

The music is how I found out that
HOT HEADis set in old-school Brooklyn where the Rat Pack still has devoted
fans. Those songs are wallpaper in parts of New York. Then I noticed
this indie-rock vibe too, because the firefighter protagonists are
by definition so young and
so social. Stirring homosexual desire into the crazy drama and
traditionalism in any fire department meant I needed period, but a
spin on the standards. I knew instantly what songs belonged in the world of the
book and with these characters. The more specific I got, the more I
thought about my reasoning, the more loudly the characters spoke to
me, the clearer the view.

Just listening from my gut,
I ended up with about 60 or 70 songs in a folder on my
computer desktop, took one night and then
just "felt" through them a song at a time until I'd cut the list in
half. I knew that bluesy vocal standards were part of it. So for
whatever weird reason, this soundtrack needed a lot of lyrics; I
tried to figure out why... Brooklyn was part of it and gossip... Small
neighborhoods and no privacy; everyone knowing each other's business
and mired in the past. Love songs of the working joe. Right!
These people were
fast-talkers but not educated.

Song by song, I winnowed. Saxophone
and piano was definite, but not Depression-era. I needed more snap and
sass... late 50s and early 60s, the glory days of Brooklyn. Also HOT HEAD
unfolds a decade after the fall of the Twin Towers so it needed a
strained, modern quality too in a couple places. Scars without
sentiment. The common thread
in all this was a sort of dreamy solo throb in the bassline, men and
women with husky tenors suffering in style, alone.

All that seemed right, but after a few hours, something still felt hollow, like I'd missed an
important detail. The 16 or 17 songs I'd found were just a little
too hip and jazzy and upbeat. I had this image stuck in my head, of my main
character (not even named Griff yet) in a condemned
brownstone looking down at his best friend in a November garden. I could see it so
specifically. Not sentimental, but somber. None of the music I'd
found fit that, so I went hunting, listening for that solo bassline
heartbeat and the tenor moan. It took two hours and three tracks from Reznor's new
Social Network score nailed it. Those pieces held a kind of sexy desolation that needed to slither
through the HOT HEAD
underbrush. Simultaneously I had stumbled onto
a strange plaintive
sadness that would arise in the story because my soundtracking had made it
clear why my two heroes were so scarred by 9/11. With that last
element, the strands braided together for the music and the book I
was ready to write.

This is the soundtrack that resulted:

Mack the Knife - Tony Bennett

Why Don't You Do Right? - Amy
Irving as Jessica Rabbit

Penetration - Social Network score

Fever - Peggy Lee

This Ruined Puzzle - Dashboard
Confessional

Same Mistake - James Blunt

Making Whoopee - L.A.
Confidential score

Hey There - Rosemary Clooney

Mack the Knife - Ella Fitzgerald

Why Don't You Do Right? - Peggy Lee

Hand Covers Bruise - Social
Network score

Out of the Rain - L.A. Confidential score

Sailors & Saints - Dashboard Confessional

Black Coffee - Peggy Lee

You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves
You - Dean Martin

The Victor - L.A. Confidential score

I've Got the World on a String - Peggy
Lee

Hand Covers Bruise reprise -
Social Network score

They Can't Take that Away from Me - Frank
Sinatra

Kisses and Cake - PS I Love You
score

Way more vocal music than I'd usually use. No idea why.
Why
the two "Mack the Knifes"? You got me! Ditto the two "Why Don't You
Do Rights" I chose. They just belonged there, something about the
contrast. It felt right.
Not the most complex or subtle "soundtrack" I've ever made. Didn't
matter. I have no idea if anyone who reads the actual book would
even feel the book in
this music. But if I hear these songs, the gay romantic angst wells
up around me, I'm in HOT HEAD
again, back in Brooklyn at (fictitious) Engine 333/Ladder 181 with
Griff and Dante. This music took me along for a ride in the rig. Listening to it
all the way through the first time, I wrote
the outline in one sitting.

For reasons I cannot explain certain songs became pivotal: "Same
Mistake", "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves
You", the Jessica Rabbit "Why Don't You Do Right?",
"Kisses and Cake", "Making Whoopee", and the
breathtaking "Hand Covers Bruise" tracks from the score of The
Social Network... If you played just those songs over and over for
a week I'd probably just write the whole book over again. When I
was writing the last chapter, I
listened to "Hand Covers Bruise" on repeat for two days straight.

Music is only one of the tools I use, but it is one of the simplest
and most effective. Whenever I feel vague or unspecific, I know it's
time to look at the story sideways... I've gone so far as to change
the soap in my shower so that a scent will become associated with a
project. I'll change my sleep schedule even the location of my
computer so that the Muse knows it's time to play. If every story is
different, then I want to meet each on its own terms.

I know what my next gay romance project is, the genre at least. I don't know the
names, the particulars, the hook, even the barebone plot. I just have a couple
phenomenal images and a pile of 70+ songs that I've gathered
this past few weeks as I wrapped another assignment. It's definitely
more of a zipper ripper, which is wild and exciting and unfamiliar. The music is already starting to tell me
about the plot, the characters, and the set-pieces
though; in the next few days I'll whittle 70 down to 20 and then be
dragged under, by hook or crook.

I'll let you know how it turns out... I know one thing: it
already
sounds like a great story.